biosphere

[eiladayn]

Avoiding theological positions as I say, all I meant to present were the statistical reasons that make me believe we are either alone, or that life is at best, a VERY RARE thing in our universe. Looking at the pictures from Hubble last night on our local edu-station and seeing the vast number of galaxies out there, one has to believe that among those gooogol of googol stars there HAS to be more life somewhere, but where? Apparently not very nearby.

Yes, if there are civilizations out there, they MAY have by passed our communication technology, but they still would be leaving us very big signals, microwaves, random radiations of any number of energies and light that we're more than cabable of detecting, say a Dyson cloud of space habitations, but there just not out there. At least, not anywhere we've looked to date. And I really think we'd have noticed a star-spanning civilization if it were anywhere within a globe of 100 LY.

Pappy

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by eiladayn:
And I really think we'd have noticed a star-spanning civilization if it were anywhere within a globe of 100 LY.

Yes, there is almost certainly no star-spanning civilisation within 100LY. There's probably none within 1000LY. Probably not within 10000LY either...

Intelligent alien life is a space opera gimmick, just like all the other ones we routinely use in Traveller.

But none of this has any connection to the probability of alien life.

The probability calculations that people have quoted make no allowance for time. I have little doubt that they are flawed in other ways.

As for "intelligent design" - as someone has pointed out, this is just good old Creationism wearing its latest hat. Dogma makes for poor science.

Alan B

 

[far-trader]

Well just to be clear I'm not a Creationist, and for what it's worth the proponents of Intelligent Design seem to also side against Creationism. I'm looking at some of the stuff on it out there now and so far a couple of arguments against ID seem to use the "bunch of Creationists in lab coats" argument as the main premise so I don't put much stock in that. It's an argument about on par with "la la la, I'm not listening" which I'd expect better of from people claiming to be adherents to the scientific method.

Anyway this is not the place to get into this discussion and I just wanted to let you know it was not my intention to bring Religion in here. I presented the idea as just an idea, one reason why in Traveller there could be so many and diverse ecosystems and life forms in such a small part of our tiny galaxy. At least that was my intent, I probably should have made that clearer to begin with. Hey at least I wasn't trying to convert you to some hokey religion <taps blaster at his side>

By all means if the debate would interest anyone start a thread, maybe on the TML where the noise ratio will tolerate it, oooh I'm so evil

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by far-trader:
Well just to be clear I'm not a Creationist, and for what it's worth the proponents of Intelligent Design seem to also side against Creationism. I'm looking at some of the stuff on it out there now and so far a couple of arguments against ID seem to use the "bunch of Creationists in lab coats" argument as the main premise so I don't put much stock in that. It's an argument about on par with "la la la, I'm not listening" which I'd expect better of from people claiming to be adherents to the scientific method.

I've seen some of their websites (I was looking for websites on radioactive heating, and these people seem to have a near monopoly on them because they think they've proved that the Earth can't be as old as we claim it is) and filed them under 'nutbag'

Also, they take 'lack of solid proof in favour of a scientific argument' as 'proof that their Creationist arguments must be right'. Yeesh.

I presented the idea as just an idea, one reason why in Traveller there could be so many and diverse ecosystems and life forms in such a small part of our tiny galaxy. At least that was my intent, I probably should have made that clearer to begin with. Hey at least I wasn't trying to convert you to some hokey religion <taps blaster at his side>

Well, maybe if there is a God who designed everything in Traveller, he lives in the middle of the galactic core beyond some hitherto unknown barrier, but strangely needs a starship to get offworld

.

Though you do realise that 'intelligent design' does actually work in a roleplaying game, since someone DID design the whole thing.

 

[eiladayn]

Originally posted by alanb:

Originally posted by eiladayn:
[qb] And I really think we'd have noticed a star-spanning civilization if it were anywhere within a globe of 100 LY.


But none of this has any connection to the probability of alien life.

The probability calculations that people have quoted make no allowance for time. I have little doubt that they are flawed in other ways.


Alan B

 

[eiladayn]

Sorry, what I meant to post after the quote above was: I think my claculations DO speak to the amount of time involved and I think they bear out the odds are NO life, not just intelligent life, none, nada, nothing but us and our very close relatives here on earth, at least in the milky way.

The only odds I quoted were that it takes a string of 600+ nucleotide pairs to make a string of DNA capable of replicating itself and demonstrating those characteristics we recognize as life and that the odds of this happening are 1 in 4 to the power of 600. This is a huge number, so huge that the fact that it has already occurred PROBABLY precludes it having occurred anywhere else. That means no life, not just intelligent life--no life......prlbably.

Pappy

 

[flykiller]

The probability calculations that people have quoted make no allowance for time. I have little doubt that they are flawed in other ways.

time is a handwave. if the aforementioned numbers and assertions are correct, fifteen billion years isn't long enough to generate any reasonable possibility of success for the initial rna sequence.

 

[alanb]

Originally posted by flykiller:
if the aforementioned numbers and assertions are correct, fifteen billion years isn't long enough to generate any reasonable possibility of success for the initial rna sequence.

Which casts doubt on the "aforementioned numbers and assertions", given that they have been presented without any supporting evidence.

Unfortunately, I'm not capable of assessing any such evidence... Oh well.

Alan B

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
if the aforementioned numbers and assertions are correct, fifteen billion years isn't long enough to generate any reasonable possibility of success for the initial rna sequence. [/QB]

Yeeees... I think the probabilities quoted here are rather too conservative. Never mind generating the RNA sequence, the probability of going from that to making something that's exactly like us must be infinitesimal.

I suspect eiladayn's probabilities are wrong - otherwise it'd be so unlikely that life would never have formed in the history of the universe, which is obviously nonsense since we're here. There's even reason to believe that life might have formed and then been wiped out completely several times by giant impacts in the first few million years of Earth's history. Which would make it even MORE difficult.... and yet here we are, still.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi,

well, statistics based on the evaluation of things already happened are still tricky.

Statistics based on assumptions are even worse.
You just cannot set up any trustable statistical scheme for things like "life in universe", because
we actually know (nearly) nothing about the environment out there.

So I really expect the try to give any probabilities for things like that to be, hmmmm not appropriate and not scientific at all.

Physics just starts to move into new concepts of chaotic systems / not linear dynamics in order to explain effects, which normally cannot be described with standard maths and statistical methods

Guess we should be ready for several surprises when dealing with our universe....

Regards,

Mert

 

[Pwyll]

In the beginning, there was no life. Then God caught a cold and sneezed, infecting the whole universe with life as we know it. We are the children of divine Snot. Everyone knows that!

 

[flykiller]

Physics just starts to move into new concepts of chaotic systems / not linear dynamics in order to explain effects, which normally cannot be described with standard maths and statistical methods

"and then a miracle occurs", yes?

 

[Whipsnade]

TheEngineer wrote:

"Physics just starts to move into new concepts of chaotic systems / not linear dynamics in order to explain effects, which normally cannot be described with standard maths and statistical methods

"


Mr. Engineer,

No, sorry. You've got that bit very wrong.

It is not that physics (or other scientific disciplines) have not been aware of the areas they cannot explain; like so-called choatic systems, it is that those disciplines have never had the tools to explain them with. They do now and are using those tools to examine areas; like turbulent fluid flows, that they previously could only dream about. What's more, there are still plenty of other areas waiting for their own tools.

Within a decade or so of their publication, scientists knew that Newton's Laws of Motion and Law of Gravity did not cover all cases. Applying Newton's laws to Mercury's orbit did not explain their empirical observations. Science knew that Newton's work had explained a great deal but not everything.

Later on, Einstein's work filled in a few more areas, but again not everything. Real scientists are aware of what they don't know. Only 'Rah-Rah' science booster types claim that science has explained even a small part of everything.

This is an important distinction; Science admits its ignorance and Faith does not. This why science is superior than faith; science is honest while faith is a collection of comforting lies. In my extremely humble opinion, no matter how comforting they may be, they are still lies.

Read Murray Gell-Man's 'Quark and the Jaguar' for an accessible take on this.

Back On-topic: Our sample regarding life is a far too narrow one to even attempt to make conjectures about the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. That being said, we have found life in a variety of amazing locations here on Earth; geysers, volcanic ocean vents, and kilometers deep in the crust to name only a few.


Sincerely,
Larsen

 

[flykiller]

I suspect eiladayn's probabilities are wrong - otherwise it'd be so unlikely that life would never have formed in the history of the universe, which is obviously nonsense since we're here.

eiladayn's "probabilities" seem clear and straightforward, and support the assertion that the existence of life implies something extraordinary. to dismiss them precisely because they imply that, requires a prior assumption behind the dismissal.

 

[Zutroi]

No one has yet pointed out the fundamental flaw in those statistics - 4^600 is the odds of randomly assembling any one particular 600 nucleotide sequence randomly.

1st, nucleotide sequencing is not truly random, there are definite skews in the odds in the real world, i.e. the if you have a C nucleotide then the odds favor the appearance of a G beside it (IIRC, but I probably don't so please don't flame me for it! ).

2nd, any sequence of DNA will be replicated if there is a way to open the double helix and a supply of nucleotided available! Therefore the odds of randomly generating a 600 nucleotide sequence capable of self-replication is 100%!

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
eiladayn's "probabilities" seem clear and straightforward, and support the assertion that the existence of life implies something extraordinary. to dismiss them precisely because they imply that, requires a prior assumption behind the dismissal.

No, it doesn't. Even assuming the probabilities are right, because something is ludicrously unlikely doesn't mean it won't happen naturally.

It just implies that it worked once. Maybe it can work again elsewhere, maybe not, but it certainly doesn't imply anything about some kind of 'divine intervention'.

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by Zutroi:
No one has yet pointed out the fundamental flaw in those statistics - 4^600 is the odds of randomly assembling any one particular 600 nucleotide sequence randomly.

Would that be the odds of assembling it all at once, if you just fling random nucleotides at the molecule? That's probably not what happened though.

It's kinda like giving the odds of a car assembling itself when you throw all the parts that make it up at a central point. Or the odds of making a particular shape of snowflake if you throw H2O molecules at a central point.

 

[eiladayn]

Not quite, but close. You need a carbon filled ocean to create the amino acids, but then to create the polymer strand of the nucleotide, you need dehydration. Then you need the ocean to provide the medium for the solution to allow the replication without enzymes.....Ocean, no ocean, ocean, no ocean....hmmmm.

I'm just saying that it sure took a lot of happenstance to create the conditions for life and then the chances of those nucleotides arranging themselves in the correct chain of 600 is very, very low even after we've jumped through all the chemical hoops needed.

Add all this to the apparent number of times life has very nearly been eradicated here by any number of geological and astronomical accidents and it makes life elsewhere very unlikely.

Pappy

 

[flykiller]

Originally posted by Malenfant:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by flykiller:
eiladayn's "probabilities" seem clear and straightforward, and support the assertion that the existence of life implies something extraordinary. to dismiss them precisely because they imply that, requires a prior assumption behind the dismissal.

No, it doesn't. Even assuming the probabilities are right, because something is ludicrously unlikely doesn't mean it won't happen naturally.</font>[/QUOTE]true, mathematically. but it's a long way from "it could happen naturally" to "it happened naturally" - especially in this case. would you consider that it might not have happened naturally? or is such a consideration to be dogmatically dismissed, viewed as less likely than 1 in 1.7x10^361?

 

[Malenfant]

Originally posted by flykiller:
true, mathematically. but it's a long way from "it could happen naturally" to "it happened naturally" - especially in this case. would you consider that it might not have happened naturally? or is such a consideration to be dogmatically dismissed, viewed as less likely than 1 in 1.7x10^361? [/QB]

There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever for any kind of intervention. A scientist does not assume that just because something unlikely happened, there must be someone 'divine intervention' that caused it to happen. This is what things like Occam's razor are for.

Maybe it came from elsewhere, from comets or something. Maybe it started up in the oceans. We don't even understand how life forms anyway, it might not be a simple matter of waiting for 600 nucleotide strands to connect up in the right way to make DNA (for starters, I think we know that it began as RNA). These at least are possibilities that tally with our knowledge of how the universe works. Divine intervention does not, and if we accept it for one thing then we have to accept it for everything, and the scientific paradigm becomes irrelevant. I dunno about you, but I sure don't want to go back to the middle ages.

Furthermore, if someone wanted to assume that there was some kind of deliberate intervention by some 'divine entity', then that's an article of faith that they believe in. It can't be proved or disproved scientifically, so it becomes pointless to discuss it further because neither side will get anywhere.